Alexei Panshin

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FAREWELL TO YESTERDAY’S TOMORROW ALEXEI PANSHIN

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MANOR Rockville, Maryland Sky Blue, Lady Sunshine and the Magoon of Beatus and Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow copyright © Alexei and Cory Panshin. All other material, with the exception of the cover, copyright © Alexei Pan- shin. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Manufactured in the United States of America. Cover Design copyright © Arc Manor, LLC

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ISBN: 978-1-60450-264-0

Sky Blue, Lady Sunshine and the Magoon of Beatus and Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow coauthored by Alexei and Cory Panshin

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Published by Phoenix Pick an imprint of Arc Manor P. O. Box 10339 Rockville, MD 20849-0339 www.ArcManor.com Printed in the United States of America / United Kingdom For Ted White and Terry Carr

“Now I’m Watching Roger” ﬁ rst published in Orbit 10, © by Damon Knight.

Preface  What's Your Excuse?  The Sons of Prometheus  The Destiny of Milton Gomrath  A Sense of Direction  How Georges Duchamps Discovered a Plot to Take Over the World  One Sunday in Neptune  Now I'm Watching Roger  Arpad  How Can We Sink When We Can Fly?  Sky Blue  When the Vertical World Becomes Horizontal  Lady Sunshine and the Magoon of Beatus  Farewell to Yesterday's Tomorrow 

Preface

he twelve science fi ction and fantasy stories and the fi nal essay that Tmake up this book are printed here in the order in which they were originally written. Th ey were fi rst published between 1966 and 1975, a tur- bulent time in this country, and a time of great changes in my own life. Th ese stories are both a product and a refl ection of their time. Th ese stories have been a means for me of wrestling with the enigma of being alive. Over and over again, each in its own way, they ask the same child- ish question: What does it mean to be an adult human being? So many questions that we ask when we are children are never answered. Th ey are indefi nitely postponed. Th is question—a child’s question—was mine. And it was never answered for me to my satisfaction. What is it to be an adult human being? It still seems to me to be as urgent a question as it ever was. In view of the desperation of the present human condition, a desperate question. If we human beings are to survive, we must know who we are and what we may become. Th e question is deliberately posed in the form of science fi ction. Science fi ction is a means of stepping outside ourselves and our present condition in search of new perception. If we already knew how to be truly adult, if we already knew how to be truly human beings, we would not be in our present diffi culties. Is our personal future and the future of mankind limited and cloudy? Th e answer indicated by science fi ction and by these stories is: only if we are un- able to change ourselves. If we could change ourselves, what might we not become? So here these stories are, from “What’s Your Excuse?” to “Lady Sunshine and the Magoon of Beatus.” A record of change and a promise of possiblity. —Alexei Panshin Elephant, Pennsylvania

What's Your Excuse?

ooley’s beard and manner were all that you would expect of any Wpsychology instructor, particularly one who enjoys his work. He leaned back in his swivel chair, his feet on his desk, hands folded behind his neck, and looked at the graduate student who had been sharing his partition- board offi ce for the past two weeks. “I’m curious about you, Holland,” he said. “By my conservative estimate, ninety-fi ve percent of degree candidates in psychology are twitches. What’s your problem?” Th e room was only about eight feet wide. Holland’s desk faced the back of the cubicle, Wooley’s faced the door, and there was a narrow aisle between the two. Holland was a teaching assistant and was busy correcting a stack of papers. He looked warily up at Wooley, who had a certain reputation, and then returned his attention to his work. “No,” Wooley said expansively. “On the face of it, I would have said that you had a very low twitch rating.” Wooley’s reputation was half for being a thoroughgoing son of a bitch, half for being fascinating in the classroom. He had a fl amboyant, student- attracting personality that was great fun for those he didn’t pick for victims. Holland fi nished marking the paper and tossed it on the stack he had completed. Th en he said, “What is a twitch rating?” “Don’t you know that neuroses and psychoses are old hat? Th ey need a scientifi c replacement, and for that purpose I have devised the twitch rating. Radiation is measured in curies, noise is measured in decibels—now psychological problems are measured in twitches. I’d rate you about fi ve. Th at’s very low, particularly for a psych student.” Holland fl ipped his red pencil to the side and leaned back. “You mean you really think that psych students are more . . . disturbed . . . than . . . ” “Th ey’re twitches,” Wooley corrected. “Th at’s why they’re psychology students. Th ey’re not twitchy because they’re psych students. What they want is to learn excuses for the way they act. Th ey don’t want to change it or even, I think, understand it. Th ey want to excuse it—you know, ‘Mama was a boozer, Daddy was a fl it, so how can I possibly help myself?’ Th ey learn all the reasons that there are for being twitchy and that makes them happy.”

9 Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow

Holland cleared his throat and leaned forward to recover his pencil. Hol- land was a very serious fellow and not completely sure just how serious Wool- ey was, and that made him ill-at-ease. “Isn’t it possible that you are mistaking an itch for a twitch?” he asked. “Th en if somebody scratches, you think he’s crazy. But what if their reason isn’t an excuse, what if there is a genuine cause and you just can’t see it? If you want a crude example, is a concentration-camp inmate a paranoid if he thinks that people are against him?” “No,” Wooley said. “Not unless he’s a graduate student in psychology. In that case I wouldn’t make any bets.” “Well, what are you doing here?” “I’m observing humanity, what else? Look, I’ll give you an example of a genuine, make-no-mistake-about-it, ninety-fi ve-rating, excuse-making twitch from right down the hall. Do you know Hector Leith?” “No. I haven’t been here long enough,” Holland said. “I don’t know every- body’s name yet, and I haven’t observed anybody twitching in the hall.” Wooley shook his head. “You’d better be careful. You’ve got the makings of a very sharp tongue there. Come along.” He swung his feet to the fl oor and led the way out into the hall. Holland hesitated for a moment and then shrugged and followed. Th e corridor ran between a double row of brown partition-board cubicles. On the walls of the corridor were photographs, a book-display rack, notices, and two plaques celebrating the accomplishments of the department’s bowling and softball teams. One of the photographs was of the previous year’s crop of graduate students. Wooley pointed at the shortest person in the picture. “Th at’s Hector Leith,” he said. “I guess I have seen him around.” “How old would you say he is?” Holland looked at the picture and tried to remember the person he’d seen briefl y in the hall. “Not more than eighteen,” he said fi nally. “He’s twenty-seven.” “You’re kidding.” “No,” Wooley said. “He’s twenty-seven, he looks eighteen or less, and he is a genuine twitch.” Th e person in the photograph was only a few inches more than fi ve feet tall, smooth-cheeked, fresh-faced, elfi sh-looking. He might possibly have passed for a junior high school student except for his air of tart awareness, and he certainly seemed out of place with the others in the picture. Wooley was there, too, with his beard. Back in their shared offi ce, Holland returned to his swivel chair while Wooley sat on the edge of his desk. “Now,” Wooley said, “he was drafted by the Army and tossed out after four weeks for emotional instability. I don’t hold too much with the Army, but I’d still give him thirty twitch points for that. He started out as a teaching 10 What's Your Excuse? assistant here, but he started twitching in front of the class and now he’s a research assistant. You can give him another thirty points for that.” “So what’s your diagnosis, Doctor?” Holland said. Wooley shrugged. “I don’t know. Manic-depressive, maybe. One day he’ll overfl ow all over you, try to be friends—try to be buddies and ask you out for a beer. You can’t imagine how funny that is between his trying to get into a bar in the fi rst place and the fact that he can’t stand beer. He’ll tell you all his problems. Th e next day he won’t talk to you at all, hide his little secrets away. And when he’s unpleasant, which is more than half the time, he’ll leave three- inch scars all over you. Give him fi fteen points for that and the last twenty points for his excuses.” “All right. What are they?” Wooley paused for eff ect. “He thinks—he says he’s fi nally fi gured it out— that he’s living at a slower rate than most people, and he really isn’t grown up yet. He still has to get his physical and emotional growth. He’s where every- body else his age was years ago.” “Why does he think that?” Wooley smiled. “Well, he thinks he is growing. He thinks he’s gaining height.” Holland said seriously, “You know, if it were so, it would really be something, wouldn’t it? I can see why it would make somebody twitchy. To be that far out of step, not know why, and be incapable of doing what people expect of you would certainly be a burden. You’d be bound to think it was you and that would only make things worse.” “Perfect excuse, isn’t it?” Wooley asked drily. “Th ere’s only one problem and that is it’s just wishful thinking.” “Well, if he’s growing . . .” “He isn’t growing. He just thinks he is. Come on and I’ll show you.” He led the way down the hall to another cubicle that was similar to their own except that there was only one desk. Th e extra space was taken up by bookshelves. Wooley fl ipped on the light. “Come on in,” he said to Holland, and Holland stepped inside. Wooley pointed to the wall at a point where a wood strip connected pieces of particle board. Th ere were a few faint pencil ticks there, the top and the bottom marks being perhaps an inch and a half apart. “Th ere,” Wooley said. “Th at’s the growing he thinks he’s done.” “Only he hasn’t?” “No,” Wooley said, chuckling. “I’ve been moving the marks. I add them on the bottom and erase the top mark. He just keeps putting it back and thinking he’s that much taller.” Holland said, “Pardon me. I have work to do.” He turned quite deliberately and walked out, his distaste evident. Wooley said after him, “It’s a psychological experiment.” But Holland didn’t stop. 11 Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow

Wooley shrugged. Th en he turned back to the pencil marks and counted them. He then picked a pencil off the desk, erased the topmost mark, and carefully added a mark at the bottom. Th en he tossed the pencil back onto the desk and turned away. Just before he got to the door, Hector Leith came around the corner and into the room. Th ey almost bumped into one another, stopped, and then carefully stepped back. Leith looked much like his picture: tiny, boyish-looking, incongruous in tie, jacket, and black overcoat. Th e briefcase he carried was the last touch that made him look like a youngster playing Daddy. He gave Wooley a bitter look and said, “What are you doing here?” ”Looking for a book.” “Whatever it is, you can’t borrow it. Get out of here. Don’t think I don’t know the trouble you’ve made for me around here, Wooley. Out.” “All right, all right,” Wooley said. “I couldn’t fi nd it anyway.” He beat a retreat down the corridor, relieved that Leith hadn’t walked in a minute earlier. When he reached his own offi ce, Holland was piling papers on his desk. “What’s this?” Wooley asked. “I’m not staying,” Holland said. “I don’t think we’re going to work well together. Th ey’ve got a desk I can use in the department offi ce until they can fi nd me another place.” “What’s the matter with you?” Wooley asked. “Why should you leave?” “What’s the matter with you?” Holland asked. “Th ey told me that nobody would stay in an offi ce with you, and I can’t stomach you, either. And I’d ad- vise you not to pull any of your tricks on me.” Ê Leith, somewhat strained, closed the door behind Wooley when he left. He wondered if he should have been less harsh. He knew that all it did was make him sound petulant, and that was something he was trying to break himself of, even with Wooley. But it was hard. He looked then at the strip of wood marked with little pencil lines, and smiled with slightly malicious delight at what he saw. He picked up the pencil that Wooley had abandoned and replaced the tick that had been erased. Th e top tick was on the level of his eyes now, perhaps even a little lower, and he wondered how long it would be before Wooley fi nally noticed. He said, quite softly, “I’m growing up, Wooley. What’s your excuse?”

12 The Sons of Prometheus

. THE COLLIGATIONS OF THE CONFRATERNITY

ou don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere. Th e Colonists fi nd that dis- Yconcerting. You arrive in a place from somewhere defi nite. Particu- larly on Zebulon. Zebulon? Whatever you do, don’t let them know where you come from. Th ey (fi nger across the neck with an appropriate sound eff ect, zit) Ship people when they catch them. Remember the Sons of Prometheus—they being the ones who had gotten it in the neck. Of course they were from Puteaux and not nearly so bright as we. It was nice of Nancy to remind Tansman of that and tell him to take care of himself, especially since it was her idea for him to go to Zebulon. It was nothing he would have thought of himself. Zebulon was not really the place for a chromoplastician with no experience in adventure, with no taste for do-gooding, with an active indiff erence to everything but the tidy defi nite suffi ciency of chromoplasts. Tansman arrived in North Hill, where he had been told he would be met by Rilke. A solid-wheeled, leather-sprung public coach was as concrete an arrival as he could manage. Th e rough ride over rougher roads had given him a stiff neck and a headache. He had tried to study local scripture, Th e Colliga- tions of the Confraternity, but fi nally gave up, put the book back in his bag, and thereafter looked out the window or at his feet. He was the only passenger. Th e talk of the megrim had been enough to empty the coach. He’d taken no notice of the rumors of plague when he bought his seat for North Hill, since he wasn’t aff ected. But he was grateful. He didn’t relate easily to other people, even Ship people. He had no idea what to say to a Colonist, people who died, people who killed. It gave him the chance to study the Colligations, since that was what Ze- bulon killed and died for. If the subject came up, he wanted to be ready. As they rattled through the rutted streets, Tansman looked through the coach window. Th ere was little traffi c—none to speak of. Th ere was less

13 Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow noise—stony quiet. Nobody to be seen. It was a strange queer place, this North Hill. Most of the adobe houses they passed were shut and shuttered. Arriving, Tansman felt more tense than he had since that fi rst moment when he had been set down here on Zebulon and put on his own. It was only the third time he had been on a planet, the third time in his life that he had left Daudelin, though he could million his light years. Once in practice for Trial when he was thirteen. Once for thirty nervous days on Trial when he turned fourteen. And now. Here he was, a chromoplastician in a world ignorant of chromoplasts, an incognito prince amongst sharp-toothed paupers, an uneasy rider in a coach that was now, at last, coming to a stop in a dusty street under a lowering sky. And he was afraid. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but he was afraid. It was his own fault for letting himself be overridden by Nancy Poate. She was his cousin, one of the few people he knew, one of the few people he let himself know. She was older than he, determined and formidable. “Phil,” she had said, “did you or did you not tell me last week that you were fi nished with that silly set of experiments you’ve been locking yourself in with?” He had told her about the experiments to make her go away. She didn’t like to hear about them so he always started talking about chromoplasts when he wanted to be left alone. “Yes,” he said. “But they aren’t silly. You shouldn’t talk about my work that way.” “Th en you need a vacation. Th is will be a vacation.” “Nancy, I’ll grant that after Earth was destroyed we owed the Colonies more than we gave them, but this sneaking around doing paternal good works to people who just want to be left alone doesn’t appeal to me.” Tansman didn’t really care about the Colonies. Th ey weren’t real to him. Th ey were distant and vaguely frightening and he didn’t want to think about them. He would grant the premises that Nancy insisted upon—because Nan- cy was immediate and, in her way, even more frightening. But he would seize on any argument he could fi nd and throw it back at her. And none of it—the points he granted or the arguments he countered with—was real, none of it was thought through. It was all talk designed to keep the fearsome where it belonged, as far away as possible. Since this argument seemed to be doing the job, he continued with it: “You don’t dare come out in the open, because you’re afraid that they’ll wring your necks, but you aren’t willing to leave them alone. So what do you do? You prod and you poke, you try to establish trade routes and other silly business, and you hand out propaganda and how-to-do-it books, and that makes you feel good. Well, it wouldn’t make me feel good, and I don’t want any part of it.” Nancy, bluff and unstoppable, just nodded. Tansman would have had himself remodeled if he looked the way she did. He was convinced that she 14 The Sons of Prometheus didn’t because her appearance helped her to overwhelm people and get her own way. She said, “I knew I was right to pick on you, Phil. You won’t be tempted to meddle. All you’ll have to do is be there for two months keeping an eye on things.” “No,” he said. “Phil,” she said. “Don’t be stuff y.” So now he was on Zebulon, not quite sure how he had been persuaded to come. He was a reluctant fi re-bringer, muttering to himself about a man he had yet to meet named Hans Rilke who was a do-gooder with an undurable liver. Th ey might call themselves “Th e Group,” but Nancy Poate’s people were low-visibility Sons of Prometheus. It seemed appropriate that Rilke should have a liver complaint. Th at had been Prometheus’ problem, too. He wondered if it were an occupational dis- ease of meddlers, and he wished Nancy Poate had found a better way to oc- cupy herself than coordinating the activities of do-gooders—including the replacement of their innards. He took a deep breath and descended from the coach, satchel in hand. He was a tall, youngish man. Not young—he disowned his youth along with all other potential folly. He was a thin man, narrow of face and large of nose. If it had ever mattered, he might have had it altered, but the chromoplasts didn’t care and if anyone else did, they had never bothered to tell him. He was wearing a slouch hat, jacket, breeches and leggings that he had been assured were seasonable and stylish here. He felt like the sort of ass who dresses up for costume parties. He’d never worn a hat before in his life, and he kept reaching up to adjust the clumsy, uncomfortable thing. Th e wind under the fl at, cold, gray sky was chill and biting. It tugged at his silly hat as he stepped down from the coach, and slapped Tansman in the face with the most overwhelming, pungent, unpleasant odor he had ever smelled. It was an eye-burning, stomach-churning reek that drowned him in singed hair and charring fl esh. Th e driver of the coach could smell it, too. He didn’t wait for Tansman. He gave a sharp whistle and his horses lurched forward. Raising dust, open coach door banging back and forth, the stage rattled to the right and around the corner and was gone between the mud-walled buildings, leaving only a dust-whorl memory. And Tansman stood alone at the edge of the square of North Hill. Fifty yards distant across the square was built a great bonfi re. Th ere may have been a base of wood beneath, but the primary fuel was human bodies. Some of the bodies were clothed, the fi re licking at the cloth, lines of fl ame running down arms and legs. Most of the bodies were naked, marked by great purple bruises like port-wine scars. Th ree determined men in gloves and white cloth masks worked by the fi re. One did his best to hold a maddened horse still. Th e other two worked as 15 Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow a team to unload the cart. Th ey grabbed arms and feet and heaved bodies like logs onto the fi re. Th ey were fast, silent and clumsy, impersonal and afraid. One body, a female, was thrown so carelessly that it rolled down the pile and slapped at the feet of a fourth man, a white-suited, white-cowled, black- belted friar. He took no notice but continued his benediction, adding his single note of dignity to the crude and ugly disposal of the dead. Tansman turned away. It was more than he could stand to watch. It was the closest he had ever been to death, that rarity on the Ship, and it was too close for his mind and stomach. He was not afraid. Before he left he had been given proofs against the accidents of Zebulon, including this hemorrhagic fever. He could have aff orded a scientifi c curiosity. But one look at the burning pile of ephemeral human animals on the cobbles, one sickening whiff of their mortality, was too much. He gagged and smothered his face in his hand. He gagged again, and ran. He ran down the street the coach had traveled into town, and he did not look back at a heavy rattle that pursued him like a nightmare of death. His bag banged heavily against his legs as he ran, and his breath came shortly. Th en he tripped and fell and lay panting in the dust. Th e rattle grew louder. A horse whickered. Th e thought fl ashed in his mind that he had been discovered. Th ey knew him here on Zebulon. He had been brought to the place of death where they disposed of the true men they detected, and this was the death cart come for him. He wanted to cry, Not me! Not me! He had never wanted to come. When would the nightmare end? Would he wake, safe in his own bed? He wanted to leap up and lock the door. And then a wheel stopped by his head. He looked up at a gnarled little old man sitting on the seat of a fl atbed wagon. Th e old man was dressed in brown leather, worn and soft, that might be seasonable but could never have been stylish. Th ere was a gold-spot earring set in his right ear and a broad- bladed knife with a curved point at his belt. He had curly muttonchop whis- kers and dirty brown hair, both shot with gray, and his last shave must have been half a week past. He was a monkey man. “Mr. Tansman?” he said, grinning down as though he enjoyed the sight of Tansman lying on his face in the street. Tansman said, “You aren’t . . .” and then stopped, because it was clear that he wasn’t. Th e pictures of Rilke that Nancy had shown him were nothing like this man. He had to be a Zebulonite, one of them, part of the nightmare. “I’m from your uncle, come to fetch you to Delera. Hop in, boy, and let’s be off . I’ve no mind to catch the megrim.” Tansman pushed himself to his knees and snatched up his fallen hat and bag. He stood and dropped them in the bed of the wagon and then began to brush the dust away. “Ah, you are a dandy, aren’t you? City people! Climb aboard, damn you. I’m not waiting.” 16